The Covid-19 pandemic showed us that innovation can thrive with distributed and remote teams, but new challenges such as isolation and communication silos are slowing us down. Simultaneously, we see the rise of several projects to create spaces for our community around the world, from Bali, to Slovenia, and China. The will to bridge the gaps among our community by building Polkadot Hubs globally is stronger than ever.
Considering this context, we decided to reunite through a collective – The Polkadot Hub Collective – to join forces and develop Polkadot Hubs in a harmonious, community-driven but decentralised fashion. The collective is made of ecosystem teams and individuals, including Parity team members and as such a collaborative effort between Polkadot ecosystem teams. The group gathers individuals from the ecosystem who all share the same vision and ambition to improve collaboration, education and innovation through human interactions, enabled by our spaces. At this point, we’d like to share more about what we’ve been working on as a team these past months, and open up the discussion to gather more feedback.
- The vision
Building Polkadot hubs globally would offer our community spaces around the world for continuous innovation, allowing us all to collaborate in new ways despite being distributed globally, and extend Polkadot’s reach to increase its impact.
- The problems we’re solving
Coming from different backgrounds but working all in the ecosystem, we all want to see our community grow and blockchain technology truly revolutionise society. However, through our various experiences, we identified problems that Polkadot hubs could solve:
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Today’s talent and innovators are valuing freedom and autonomy over all, driving the rise of remote work and distributed teams. However, we believe that in parallel there is a growing need felt by teams and individuals to connect in person in order to establish stronger relationships.
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The focus has shifted to outputs that teams produce through hackathons, workshops and networking events. Organising these and delivering high-quality and well-planned gatherings is a real challenge, especially when in different places each time. Particularly, securing venues for each event presents difficulties, leading to scheduling conflicts and budget strains.
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Education is a very common barrier to entry for blockchain developers. The lack of learning centres slows down common knowledge sharing, the rate of projects built and the overall adoption of our technology.
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While blockchain technologies and web3 gain traction globally, some regions in the world and countries receive less attention from investors than others. Providing replicable guidelines to build innovation centres in any region would empower all communities equally and address regional inequalities.
- General potential of the initiative
Now, how would Polkadot Hubs help solve those issues? Here comes some data to help demonstrate our point:
- With a global community of more than 2.8 million Rust developers (source SlashData Q1 2022, there is a real opportunity to reach out to a multitude of developers not yet familiar with the potential of our ecosystem through events, coworking, and other collaboration hosted in distributed hubs around the world.
- On average, 28 % (Parity research, June 2023) of the budget for an external-facing event organised in the ecosystem is dedicated to venue rental. By delivering top-qualitative and operational event spaces for members of our ecosystem, global hubs would increase the possibility of successful events while unlocking resources that could be allocated to other essential areas.It would help our ecosystem thrive by delivering exceptional event experiences while optimising resource allocation for maximum impact.
- Team retreats are essential for better collaboration and building a collective spirit in a remote environment. After discussing with several ecosystem team leaders it seems that a reason for retreats not to happen is their operational costs. At Parity, renting conferencing facilities as part of the organisation of team retreats represents between 10-25% of the overall budget for the event (data from H1 2023). Polkadot Hubs would offer a unique opportunity for collaboration between teams and community members outside of their usual circles in an uncomplicated and cost-efficient way.
- Early this year, a recent engagement survey was conducted among ecosystem teams, assessing team sentiment regarding the creation of such hubs and the results were unanimous: 100% of participants (17/17) are in favour of the emergence of Polkadot Hubs.
These numbers are just a selection to show some real-life examples of how such a space could be beneficial. More granular statistics on each location would also be researched as part of the preliminary phase before Polkadot Hubs’ development. For example, questions such as the percentage of developers actively working in the ecosystem in the region, and other local stats will be helpful to assess regional opportunities.
- The concept — and what makes it unique.
By developing hubs around the world we want to offer spaces for the community to experiment, co-work and meet-up in new ways possible. While these interactions already happen, the creation of Polkadot Hubs would offer a finer solution than existing options such as traditional offices, co-working spaces, home office, and conferences. These spaces will be for ecosystem teams, developers and technical builders, ambassadors, investors, token holders, Polkadot enthusiasts and non-technical builders. A representation of what the ecosystem is made of.
Through real life experiences and in-person interactions coworking or meeting at workshops, conferences, retreats and hackathons, users will benefit from:
- Increased collaboration and reduced communication silos to nurture new ideas.
- Talent attraction and more opportunities for education and training of novices.
- Incubation of early-stage projects relying on the community’s resources, mentorship, and network effect creating opportunities for individuals.
- Business development opportunities by helping grow the number of teams / developers in the ecosystem as well as connecting entrepreneurs with investors.
- Operational support by offering ecosystem teams a renowned and safe location to help them break remote work barriers.
Our ecosystem is diverse and versatile and so should be our hubs. Offering different types of spaces - with various categories of sizes - would enable organic growth across different locations, accommodating various needs, and ensuring accessibility to global communities. That way, Polkadot Hubs could be available in various forms:
- α: Located in cities already attracting web3 projects, those hubs will help position Polkadot among others. Initiated and managed by multiple ecosystem teams, they will offer a space for collaboration, education, wellbeing, entrepreneurship, state-of-the-art.
- β: Though smaller in size, they hold equal importance as vibrant centres in upcoming cities/regions. Initiated by a single ecosystem team. Offer a space for networking, education, community support and builders attraction.
- γ: Equally impactful they differ by being collaboratively managed by members. Initiated by a group of ambassadors, they will have a distinct focus in their operations while adhering to the common Hubs guidelines.
- δ: Temporary Hubs set up as dynamic pop-up locations by community members. They will be strategically positioned as part of larger events or community-relevant activities with the goal to be a go-to Polkadot venue outside of the event location.
The collective will spearhead this initiative by curating projects and ensuring their quality and commitment. In collaboration with the community, the collective will leverage existing resources to create guidelines in the form of a Global Polkadot Hubs Playbook. This playbook will assist others in the ecosystem who are interested in building more Polkadot Hubs, promoting consistency and equal representation on a global scale. It will achieve this by sharing knowledge and outlining strategies, guidelines, and financial planning. Following the principles of open-source technology, this approach will empower more builders to develop their own spaces in a decentralised manner while upholding consistent quality standards.
- Financial plan and revenue streams.
Built to be financially sustainable, the revenue streams of the hubs are essential to support the space’s maintenance and daily operations. The recommended solution so far is a contribution-based approach from the users, in the shape of:
- Space rents paid by interested parties
- Coworking fees paid by community members
- Events/hackathons space fees paid by events organisers
- Retail (coffee shop, goodies)
The financial model of each hub will depend on their category (α, β, γ, δ) and localisation and will be assessed individually as part of the development process.
In the eventuality of a bounty proposal, it would only cover exceptional or retroactive expenses such as Polkadot branding costs, including static branding and all activities related to increasing brand awareness. But it shall not be part of the financial plan for the running of the space.
- Evidence that our team can execute
To ensure the success and growth of the Polkadot Hubs, the Collective cares about measuring their performance using a set of metrics, to ensure its long-term sustainability and growth. We’re currently thinking about those metrics to do so:
- Number of events/hackathons (monthly),
- Events participation,
- Net promoter score,
- Number of new (local) Polkadot developers/ambassadors
- Number of new (local) projects tracked on quarterly basis
- Number of new (local) hires tracked on quarterly basis
- Number of visitors (footfall),
- Desk occupancy.
Looking at the SubWork project in Bled, Slovenia, their transparent and regular reports on their progress, to keep the community informed about their developments and engaged is a good practice.
- Polkadot Sanctuary in Bali - current proposal
As explained at the beginning of this post, our collective has emerged due to the work of many different teams around the world, aiming to create physical spaces for the Polkadot community. One such initiative is the Polkadot Sanctuary, led by Polkadot Ambassadors and members of the Collective Six and Gabo, who submitted a proposal for voting last week. We believe this project can have a positive impact on the community by offering spaces for experimentation, co-working, and meet-ups. But considering community sentiment, we recognize that the proposal may have been brought forth at a too early stage and may not have been uniformly understood.
Proposals in the context of Polkadot Hubs should thrive:
- To be clear on focus and intended outcomes. Too broad or vague ambitions make it difficult for voters to understand what treasury funds will be used for.
- To demonstrate the value generated for Polkadot and the impact anticipated in the region of choice, while highlighting the collaborative and decentralised approach through an open dialogue.
- To be clear and consistent, ensuring that explanations about the proposal are easy to understand, and information stays uniform.
- To demonstrate their ability to be financially sustainable.
Nevertheless, we think the ideas and energy behind this proposal are right for Polkadot and we are keen to work with the Polkadot Sanctuary team to improve their proposal and build sustainable and supportive hubs of the Polkadot community.
- Call for feedback
Now that the concept is revealed, we would love to know more about what you think:
- Is this project relevant to you and in which city/region would you benefit from a hub?
- What services would you be most interested to use in a Polkadot Hub?
- What would be your level of engagement with pilot projects?
- What do you think about the Bali proposal submitted by Six and Gabo?
- How do you feel about Berlin as a location kick-started by Parity?
- What kind of metrics would you like to see implemented for the success of Hubs?
Polkadot Hubs are going to be created for the community by the community. We need you, to build the hubs you need. As we will only consider the project successful if it serves and is supported by Polkadot ecosystem teams, we need you to help us curate it by sharing your feedback with this short form (2mins max)! . Want to learn more and get involved? We’ll be hosting a live AMA on August 4th - 3:30pm CET
If you are interested in joining our collective, you are very welcome to! Simply join our Telegram group.
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